How Long is Forever?
by MakoMori
Summary: When a nation ceases to exist, he becomes a mortal. This is an AU in that the end of the Cold War meant not only the dissolving of the Soviet Union, but also made it impossible for the Russian Federation to form in its place.


To say that Ivan was used to the sensation of abandonment would be an understatement. He'd been abandoned by the other nations, by his own family, even by the ones he considered to be his _friends-_

But the day he was abandoned by his own people was the day he caught sight of the first wrinkles beneath his eyes. He told himself that it was stress, stress from the loss of the war, from watching America across the Pacific Ocean flood his cities with newspaper headlines like confetti in the streets. Confetti that fell like ash on Ivan's shoulders, weighed him down until his feet could no longer carry him. Seep into his skin until the unnatural paleness took on a gray undertone. Bleed into his hair until the pale wheat color faded into silver.

It wasn't to say that Ivan particularly enjoyed his new apartment. It was… smaller - significantly so - than his house before this (before Belarus left) and only the size of his foyer in his mansion before that (before _everyone _left), but without the government's money (without the _government) _to fund the payments of his old house, Ivan was forced to take a job as a fish-cutter fourteen blocks away. He could stand the first week, of the employers, of the customers, of the smell of fresh fish, and of rotting fish, but then he just _hated _it - the snow caught on the ends of his eyelashes, the employers, the customers, the people - _his _people, and how much he _hated _them like the smell of rotting fish and the rotting drywall of his apartment. And he hated the squat, plump owner of the shoppe who demanded that he hung his scarf on the hanger along with his coat, like they actually belong together on the same plane - staring at his scars like they were blood diamonds on his neck.

And then the taste of blood on his tongue the afternoon that his knife _slipped_- and how it wouldn't stop bleeding - _ - _how he thought he was going to _die _because he can now-

(And he was so used to drawing the blood of another, and drawing his own)

He was pleading, shaking, on the verge of tears, his thumb pressed against his wrist as a solitary bead of blood collected on his fingernail and hit the tile floor. And before his he could register his own heart (his own living, beating heart, the one the others said didn't exist, the fragile little muscle pumping blood to the end of his fingertip where it won't be returned) beating in his ears, he felt the wicked bite of a towel against his arm. The woman, the one he called "boss" who had no authority but over the 220 square feet she owned of the 183,796,715,520,000 square feet he once called his own, who smelled of rotten fish and dared to beat a dying man with a towel and _demand _that he get back to work. ("You incompetent boy! Do not stand around like a fool! Get back to work, there are fish to cut!")

And when he watched the snow fall that evening and frost over his window, Ivan wondered what had become of his beloved General Winter. He sat at the end of the mattress on the floor, knees to his chest, and the thick quilt of his older sister's stitching wrapped as thoroughly around his body as the bandage on his finger. His nose was buried in his scarf, the one that smelled like fish that no longer brought him comfort to wear. He watched the cold fog up the inside of his window, Ivan breathing his own cloud of frost into his hands as a pitiful excuse to keep himself warm. He wondered aloud, "are you still watching me, General? Have you left me like the others have, even after you promised? Like they promised?"

He hears not the shackles of his Generals broken wrist bindings, nor the moans and cracks of his lethal breath, and falls into a deep slumber with the smell of rotting fish still on his clothes, cradling the finger that he was certain still bled beneath the bandage, and fully prepared to die.

Just as he did every night before.

And the many nights to follow that.

But the morning that his cut had finally healed and Ivan peeled off the bandage, a very unusual customer walked into the shop.

And the first thing he noticed about the man with the brunette hair, jet black tie, and clean-shaved face, was that the man spoke English. The elderly woman who smelled like fish was irate with the man who could not understand anything but the whipping motions of her damp towel, and demanded that he leave if he had no interest in any of the fish she and her husband had to sell. Between the man's pleas to silence her demands for him to leave, a single sentence of broken Russian caught Ivan's ears: "Gde Rossiya?"

_Where is Russia? _

And the woman seemed more angry by his daft statement, wearing a face that read _you are in Russia_, but Ivan approached the counter behind her, knife in hand, towering more than a foot above his employer. "Ya Ivan Braginsky." _I am Ivan Braginsky. _

From behind the thick sunglasses that the strange English-speaking man wore, Ivan could see that their gazes were now locked. "Please come with me, Mr. Russia."

Ivan could not remember the last time he'd been in a stretch limousine (He imagined that the elongated black car looked out-of-place in the white-washed, snowy back streets of Moscow). Now that he could count the passing years on the wrinkles of his face, days were a blur to him.

The man, who simply introduced himself as Mr. Adams, said close to nothing while the limousine cruised toward Red Square, but even as Ivan stared out at the streetlights that were flickering on over a darkening backdrop of setting sun, he could feel Mr. Adam's eyes watching him. So Ivan did not move if he could help it - his eyelashes flickered, his eyes caught the faces of the Muscovite shoppers, and his fingers twitched in his lap. When every headlight and streetlight had sprung to life on the Moscow streets, the limousine came to a slow outside the Baltschug Kempinski Hotel on the bank of the Moscow River.

A doorman with a strong chin and hollow cheekbones pulled the door open the moment the car halted. Ivan felt a hand on his shoulder ushering him out of the car, but an inspection behind him found a limousine still containing Mr. Adams bound in a retreat.

Ivan felt his heart jump up to his throat as he pushed past the revolving doors. As the smell of floor polish filled his nostrils, Ivan realized that he almost missed the smell of fish. He felt like a bruise to the beautiful decor and fine pressed suits of the hotel attendees while he wore a ill-fitting pair of slacks, red sweater, and moth-eaten scarf-

-which suddenly felt heavier on his shoulders. He could feel it slipping from around his neck, and when he spun around to snatch up the fabric and keep it secure around him, his eyes locked with a impossible blue depth. "I can't believe that you're still wearing this trashy thing after this long."

Ivan opened his mouth to say something, but the hollow space was quickly occupied with a laugh much too loud and sudden from the man standing across from him. "Do you know how fucking long I it took me to figure out where you've been hiding? I mean, for a tall guy, you're really hard to find, and then I had to go hire a fucking… private investigator to locate you."

Whatever words Ivan planned to say, he swallowed, pursed his lips. The other man smiled. "I missed you, Russia."

"It's Ivan now. Russia died off with the rest of the Soviet Union, America."

America shoved his hands into his pockets, that dazzling Hollywood smile of his diminishing to guilty smirk. "You think I don't know that, big guy? I spent almost fifty years assuring that it would happen-"

"-and it did, America. Russia - The Soviet Union - ceased to exist." Ivan bit his bottom lip, close to drawing blood (but not doing it for fear again that he may die) to resist the urge to punch the nation between the frames of his glasses. "They call it 'The Republic of Rus' now, just like I was when I was a child."

America stepped forward, his smile vanishing entirely. The blonde threw two glances over either shoulder as if to confirm no one was watching them or listening in (never mind the fact that most of the hotel guests could not speak English.) Ivan felt America's fingers catch in the front of his sweater as leverage to yank him forward. "How old are you?"

"1149."

"I meant–"

"–in human years? Forty-eight."

"And… before?"

"Twenty-six."

The corner of America's mouth twitched as his forehead touched down on Ivan's sternum. "Yeah, just… come on. Let's go to my hotel room. I've got this really nice view of the Dome Cathedral thing…"

"St. Basil's."

"Yeah, that…"

Ivan felt his stomach remain in the first floor lobby as the elevator pulled two men, several quarts of silence, and a dozen gallons of awkwardness to the eighth floor of the hotel. The elevator doors opened onto a set of large wooden double-doors. America quickly exited and took it upon himself to unlock the doors with his card key. Ivan was welcomed with a rush of warm colors the moment the lights flickered to life. He could see that Alfred had already took it upon himself to sample everything in the mini fridge as the two of them passed the living area and through the divider that lead to the bedroom.

Even with the change in interior decoration, Ivan could still recognize the architectural shape and similar placement of furniture as the same it was decades before when he and America had fallen on this mattress, limbs tangled and lips locked- only this time he and American had not fallen onto, but settled on the edge of the mattress. As Ivan turned to address the nation, America caught his face between his hands and ran his thumbs along the delicate wrinkle lines beneath Ivan's eyes.

"You've gotten old… Ivan." America leaned in, pressing a kiss to the corner of Russia's mouth. "It's not fair… you keep aging and I'm still… I still look like a fucking nineteen year old." Ivan bowed his head and allowed his own hand to slide down the front of America's chest. "I hate this, how long it took for me to find you.

"Your hair's gotten… whiter." America leaned forward, brushing Russia's bangs. "But your eyes still look… over a thousand years old." The nation bowed his head, pressed it against Ivan's sternum while the Russian's hands carded through his hair. "Am I too old for you now, Ivan? Too old to kiss you?" He sat up on his knees even before those words left his lips, then pressed his mouth against the man's. He waited for Ivan to respond, and the slightest twitch in his hair when Ivan's fingers combed through the hairs at the base of America's neck was enough incentive for America to fully engulf the Russian's mouth in his, tongue, teeth, and all.

When America's hands had left the gentle cradle of Ivan's jaw, they moved with purpose, down beneath the layer of Ivan's slacks to stroke him. He laughed, breathy against lips as the pressure of his kiss coaxed the former nation flat onto the mattress. "I missed those cute sounds of yours, Ivan."

He kissed down the Russian's chest, stomach, savoring every single coo and sigh with the burden of knowing that one day they would cease. He committed every moment of that night to memory, gentle in fear that Ivan would break or shatter beneath him.

The next morning Russia was shocked to feel a smack on the back of his hand; the cigarette nestled between his fingers fell over the frost-coated rail of the balcony and to its death in the streets below.

"Stop smoking, Ivan. You can't get away with it anymore because your lungs are mortal, therefore you can develop lung cancer, and that diminishes your chances of living to a-hundred-and-two."

"You're up early," Ivan commented, content with the patterns his breath made in the cold sigh to replace the cigarette smoke.

"I couldn't sleep." Russia caught the flash of a lighter cradled behind America's closed fingers as he exhaled a mix of smoke and frozen breath. Ivan bit back his insults and stared off at the boats passing through the Moscow River.

"-na ask me?"

Ivan blinked and turned back to America. "Hm?"

"You're not gonna ask me? Why I couldn't sleep?"

"I don't think it necessary."

"Well, fine, spoil it. I was trying to think of a way to properly ask you to… uhm, come back to DC with me, if that's okay. Mr. Adams had been watching you for a while, and he said that the apartment you're living in isn't so great… and I can get you an apartment in a really warm place. I mean, now that you're not tied to Russi- The Republic of Rus anymore, you can actually stay with me."

Ivan stared at him long and hard, long enough until America's eyes started twitching from the inability to focus on Ivan's nearsighted blur, and hard enough that Alfred had to eventually look away. "You don't have to. I would understand why you wouldn't want to leave this place."

"I'll go."

"Ivan, please, you- what? You'll go? Really?"

"Yes."

America couldn't mask the smile. "Yeah, I mean- great! That's great, Ivan."

-:- -:- -:-

It was around the third winter in Washington DC that Ivan had forgotten his mother tongue. Without what he once called _his _people exchanging _zdrasvuitye_'s with him in the street, he could not mutter anything but 'hello', but even those had become sparingly used in the days that America was absent.

What seemed like hours to America lasted for weeks in Ivan's eyes. He pretended not to hear the second or third pair of footsteps when America would come home from meetings. Ivan crouched at the head of the stairs, hands holding the banisters like they were prison bars that would not let him venture past the top floor to where he would hear England say, "Why do you keep him locked up here like some animal? Has he become your pet, America? A pet that you can just feed and shag, do you think this is how he wants to spend the rest of his life?"

And he'd grown to hate the phrase "the rest of your life."

The night he'd grown to hate that phrase that would often leave England's mouth, France discovered the spare bedroom that Alfred had locked his precious pet in.

"_Mon__ chou_, I think it is time that you and I 'ave a talk."

Ivan was used to France touching him, but the lips in his hair and the hands on his waist had no intentions but to comfort the man clinging to his Merlot-covered silk shirt. France sighed, making himself comfortable between the sheets and Ivan's arms. "Do you remember Prussia?"

How could Ivan forget Prussia? Of course, Ivan had known him better as East Germany before he was reunited again by the very Wall that caused Ivan's demise. "You see, 'e is like you. Ever since both Prussia and East Germany 'ave ceased to exist, 'e 'as become like you. Mortal. And like you, one day 'e will die, too."

And when Ivan happened to run into Lovino and Spain by the cherry blossoms a few months later, Lovino provided him the same comfort. "Look, bastard, you know how everyone thinks my Grandfather just up and disappeared one day like some fucking magician? He ended up the same as you. He just became one of the humans and then was killed in battle. I still haven't told Fratello about it, and I don't fucking care to either. Point is, it's normal for our kind."

_It's normal. _

"I'm leaving you, America."

America looked up from the morning paper, suddenly less concerned with the economic downturn and the fact that half his doughnut was dissolving into his coffee. "What?"

"I am going back to Moscow. I am miserable here, and I would rather die tomorrow at home then spend the rest of my lifetime trapped in this house with you."

"Fine, but… if you go back, promise me that you'll take this." America had given up after ten minutes of arguing, which felt more like two hours in Russia's eyes, and the only contact America's skin had with Ivan's with the brief brush of their fingers when Ivan accepted a manilla envelope from his lover-turned-landlord. "And… stay in contact with me… please."

After Ivan had finished paying the rent on his former government-funded apartment for the forth month, he had forgotten the source of the money paying for it. This was the source that made a point of calling him three times a week, and the source whose call was rejected all three times.

Ivan thought that one-thousand candles would be too difficult to fit on a cake, he thought that maybe, as late December rolled around, that fifty would be and impractical but capable number of candles to bury in the chocolate frosting. Twenty candles in, the wax of the first had already melted into the "H" of the word "Happy" and besmirched the meaning of the word just as the world

At candle number twenty-six, he'd given up and allowed the draft of an open window to blow them out.


End file.
